


promised land

by orphan_account



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, First Meetings, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:01:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27175594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Nicolò and Yusuf find each other, again and again and again. Staying, however, is another matter altogether.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 8
Kudos: 70





	promised land

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically me trying to get my head around Nicky and Joe's origin story. I wasn't expecting it to be this long but wow Nicky has a lot of internal angst to deal with. Oh well! Quote in the beginning is from Ghost Quartet, which is a really lovely, eerie, magical musical. 
> 
> t/w: battle gore & violence - both against individuals and cities. Religious slurs (ie) Nicky refers to Joe as an infidel a significant amount before he gets his shit together. Internalised homophobia (because 11th & 12th century yay!) and uncomfortable family situations.

> _"And now I'm infected  
>  With disbelief and blasphemy  
>  I'll never have a holy land." -_ **Starchild**

*

**i. antioch**

“Well,” Nicolò’s new squire – a Frank by the name of Corbus – says as the army jangles to a halt. “At least we’re out of the city. I was starting to think Antioch was our purgatory.”

“We must endure purgatory to reach heaven,” Nicolò says, handing over the reins of his horse and narrowing his eyes into the glare of the climbing sun. It glints off the spears and shields of Kerbogha’s massed army, dark and foreboding with the river glistening silver at their backs and the hills beyond that, forested and swelling towards the sky. They haven’t left themselves a strategic retreat. Perhaps it’s foolishness, perhaps it’s a stubborn belief in their victory. Nicolò doesn’t know – all he does is that whoever wins, it’s going to be a bloodbath. “And Jerusalem isn’t so distant, now.”

“Indeed, sire,” Corbus says.

Nicolò turns to face his soldiers, looks over them one by one, counting the names off in his head, noting the gaps with no small ache. Their faces are sun-reddened and dusty and exhausted, but they all stand up straighter under his eyes. They are a messy, motley bunch – all stragglers who’ve lost their own knights and lords, several women whom everyone politely pretends are men, old and young, from as many countries as Nicolò has fingers – but despite this they are hungry, scrappy, braver than most. Nicolò’s proud of them, of their well-earned reputation for following him into the fiercest parts of the fighting, for leading any charge more headed for death than glory.

“I do think you are insane,” Lord Raymond had said once, after Nicaea as Nicolò had risen to his feet, newly a knight with the sun setting over the battlefield and blood streaking grisly fingers down his tabard. “But your insanity saved my life and for that I am grateful beyond measure.”

Nicolò had inclined his head, accepted the accolade calmly, hid the glowing feeling igniting in his chest. Pride is a sin, after all, but he wishes his brother could have seen him, could have seen the other knights bowing, could have seen the walking legends he and his soldiers have since become.

“It’s been a difficult month,” he says, raising his voice just enough to carry. Others behind also look up at the sound of his voice. “But you have fought well and bravely and defended a new holy city. We fight today to win it for God, once and forever. May His blessings carry you all into this battle and out the other side and onto Jerusalem!”

They cheer, loud, and Nicolò makes the sign of the cross over them, mounts his horse, adjusts his hidden dagger so that it doesn’t get stuck in his chainmail. Corbus mounts the second horse behind him, and they turn towards the enemy. He can just see Raymond’s banner in the centre of the vanguard and he murmurs a quiet prayer to himself under his breath, tries to quiet his thundering heart. He hates the moments before a battle begins, the waiting. It never gets any easier. A courier thunders past the front line. A horn blows, echoed up and down the army, answered by horns from the other side, and the battle begins.

Nicolò’s soldiers easily move ahead of the front line, disciplined and in formation, following his horse, and they crash into the tide of the infidel army like an arrowhead. Nicolò’s mind goes perfectly blank, the way it always does in battle, blocking out the screams, the yells, the gurgles. Blood splashes, dark red. His helmet is hot, heavy, and he is very aware of his own breathing rasping against the metal. Time compresses and extends, marked only by his lance meeting flesh, bodies falling before him.

His horse stumbles and falls and he’s sliding off quickly, abandoning his lance and drawing his sword, hacking his way through towards the river. The infidel army is fracturing around them. He hears Imilia yell out a warning behind him, Corbin shouting back. How long has it been? Seconds? Hours? He’s taller than most of his opponents, stronger too, every movement burned into his muscles – he clears a path. Some of them are running. He dodges an arrow, pivots on one foot. Someone’s fingers crunch beneath his boot, someone else screams.

There’s a shout in Arabic to his left and he turns, just misses a spear-thrust aimed at his shoulder. The soldier is taller than Nicolò, just, armed with a spear and a sword. His tunic is soaked in blood, and he wears a dented metal helmet. He tries to spear Nicolò again, but Nicolò dances backwards, catches the spear between his sword and shield, jerks it out of the soldier’s hands.

“You’re going to have to try harder than that, Christian,” the soldier says in very heavily accented Latin, managing to make the word Christian sound insulting. He hefts his sword.

“I’m only just getting started,” Nicolò promises, mirroring him. They begin to fight, almost lazily at first, working out each other’s patterns, ticks, defences. The infidel is good – very good. He blocks Nicolò’s sword effortlessly, laughs in Nicolò’s face, matches him step for step. Nicolò’s calm starts to fray and he starts to push harder, to take more risks, and the black humour is gone from the other man’s face, replaced with serious concentration, anger. Nicolò feels as though he’s sparking, alight with something he can’t name. He’s not been up against an opponent who can match him in so long; it feels more like a fair fight now than an execution, a challenge in both body and mind.

The other soldiers aren’t joining in, and the back of Nicolò’s brain realises that they’re breaking and running. He hears the splash of water.

“Not going to follow your countrymen?” he jeers, ducking a swing that could have easily taken his head off.

“What do you think I am, a coward?” the infidel snarls back. Their swords meet at eye level and Nicolò looks at him, at the hatred in his face, knows that his own must be a dead mirror behind his helmet. This is the war in microcosm, this is the frontier between two worlds, two gods. Nicolò’s arms are screaming and he breaks the deadlock suddenly, lunges, manages to gash open the infidel’s arm. “Mother _fucker_.”

“Incest is a sin and a crime against God,” Nicolò says, taking a deep gulp of air. They’re circling again. The army is still running past, endless thundering feet and blood-curdling screams.

“It wasn’t incest, it was fucking profanity.”

“Also a sin,” Nicolò snaps.

“Everything is a sin to you,” the infidel grunts, surging forward again. “It’s almost as if you Christians are scared of actually living.”

“You know nothing about my faith.”

“And you know nothing about the world. A shame, really.”

Their swords screech. Nicolò sees his opportunity, lunges, drops his sword and buries his dagger hilt-deep into the other man’s throat. He feels as though he’s been punched, hard, and he looks down to see the other man’s sword in his stomach. The pain is sudden and utterly blinding. The infidel has toppled over and Nicolò pitches to his knees, snapping his teeth shut on a scream.

 _Lord, into your hands I commend my spirit,_ he hears himself murmur. He thinks briefly that he would have liked to see home again, to see Guinelda one last time, and then he blacks out.

*

He wakes up aching and covered in blood, surrounded by the dead and decaying. There is no pain in his stomach. The sun is burning hot and he is very, very thirsty. He pushes himself upright, dreamlike. Is he dead? Why is he still on the battlefield? Surely he should be lining up with the rest of the faithful for judgement, waiting for St Peter to pass sentence on his life. Surely he shouldn’t still be _here._

The infidel’s sword is lying at some distance from him and he curls into a standing position. His chainmail rattles. The infidel himself is not there; perhaps he was a lord, Nicolò thinks dispassionately. Perhaps he was taken for burial, or for whatever infidels do with their dead. Nicolò’s foot crunches onto someone’s face and he looks down, then holds out his bloodstained hands. They seem solid enough. He briefly considers the fact it might be judgement day, come already, but if that were the case the other bodies around him would also be coming back to life and they all seem rather determinedly dead.

Perhaps it was a miracle. Perhaps his purpose on earth is not yet done. He takes a deep breath of burning air, retrieves his sword and picks his way through the bodies until he finds a spot of bare earth amongst the carnage. He kneels in a clattering of armour and pulls off his helmet. He prays, thanks God for his survival, and then staggers back to his feet and towards the city.

The streets are filled with jubilant soldiers and loose women, flowing with drink and shouts. Nicolò makes his unsteady way through them towards the tavern his soldiers are quartered at, pushes open the door. It’s quiet and dark and cool inside and everyone inside falls silent.

“Sire?” a voice asks, and then Corbus is appearing out of the darkness, blanched behind his sunburn. Then, his training kicking in, he takes Nicolò’s helmet and sword. “We thought you were dead.”

“God’s mercy is great,” Nicolò says, dazed. Corbus passes off the sword and helmet to another soldier, drapes Nicolò’s arm over his shoulders.

“Imilia, help,” he says into the silent crowd of faces, and Imilia is there too. There’s a bandage around her left arm, deep dips around her eyes.

“I’m fine,” Nicolò tells them, but of course they ignore him, help him up the stairs into the small room Corbus had insisted he take.

“You’re drenched in blood,” Corbus says, ignoring Nicolò altogether. “Imilia, go and see the tavernkeeper about whatever food he has. I’m going to draw a bath. Sit down, sire, let’s get this armour off,” then, “there’s not even a scratch on you!”

Corbus keeps talking, updates on the soldiers – not as many lost as Nicolò had feared – and the battle – won quickly and decisively – and then onto inane things as he helps Nicolò into the bath, hands him a cloth and goes to work cleaning the armour. Nicolò lets him chatter, realises it’s as much for Corbus’ own comfort as Nicolò’s; anyway, it gives him time to turn the miracle over in his head. He’s been given a second chance to fight for God and he’s going to make the most of it.

**ii. jerusalem**

By the time they reach the walls of Jerusalem, Nicolò is beginning to realise that he cannot write it off as a miracle. Sword cuts and arrows leave no scars. He catches an arrow to the throat and wakes before he hits the ground, picks himself up and continues to fight. He learns not to black out with the pain of almost-dying, to keep fighting despite it all. He takes risks to save his soldiers. He becomes more reckless.

“Jesu, Genova, I do think you have a death wish,” one of his fellow knights, a handsome, pious fighter from Britannia by the name of Edmund, says to him in camp one night. Nicolò doesn’t look up from his rosary.

“Just the luck of the angels,” Corbus says quietly in response.

“If he keeps it up he might well be canonised,” Edmund says, amused. “I’ve heard rumours.”

Nicolò closes his eyes for a second. To be canonised, he has to be dead – something he’s quickly realising is not going to happen for him at any time soon.

“I’m not quite ready to leave this holy war yet,” he says, as mildly as he can.

“Good,” Edmund responds. “I do think we would be quite lost without you.”

The war splutters on. When Nicolò is not fighting or sleeping, he’s on his knees in their makeshift chapel, praying and praying. When he’s not fighting or praying, he’s dreaming of people – of a tanned, dark-haired woman with a brutal smile, of a slender golden woman wrapped in russet red cloth, of a dark-skinned man with serious, steady eyes. And he dreams of the infidel, of his taunting face, of his skill, of his eyes, dark enough to drown in.

One day, he cuts his hand with his dagger alone at night. Corbus is asleep on the floor of the tent just across from him. Blood drips onto the blanket for all of a second before the cut is healing, skin stitching itself back together before his eyes. His breathing gets stuck somewhere in the middle of his chest and he stares at the smooth, perfect skin of his palm.

“Help me, God,” he whispers to himself, shutting his eyes against tears he won’t let fall. “Show me the way. What are you doing to me?”

No answer comes, as usual. Nicolò sighs, swallows. He must have faith. He must trust that God has a purpose for him. There is no other way.

*

Three days later, Jerusalem falls. It’s been weeks in coming and they storm the north wall with a terrifying amount of ease. Nicolò leads his soldiers through the streets, closes his eyes briefly. The Lord Jesus Christ walked here, spent the last days of his life here. It’s felt like a mirage on the horizon for so long that to be here feels like a small miracle in itself.

“What’s happening?” Imilia asks. She’s the only one of his first soldiers still standing, his right hand in all things. Her braids are curled up under her helmet, her eyes are iron. Belatedly, Nicolò hears the screaming, follows her eyes to the square at the end of the street. As they watch, a solider – not one of his, none of them would _dare_ – catches a girl child by her braids, slips a dagger between her ribs, lets her fall. “What are they _doing_?”

“They’re going mad,” Corbus says, appearing from somewhere behind. Nicolò’s soldiers are watching him, wary, hands on swords. “Everyone is going mad! They’re killing everyone!”

“I’ll find one of the generals. Stop them where you can,” Nicolò orders, finding his breath.

“Yes, sire,” Corbus says and he and Imilia peel off, the soldiers gathering to them and listening to their shouted instructions. Nicolò draws his sword and marches through the city, dragging good Christian soldiers off the inhabitants of Jerusalem, horror congealing his blood. This is not a holy war. There is nothing holy in the slaughter of innocent civilians, women and children, infidel or not. This is carnage like he’s never seen.

He can hear a woman screaming down the end of a long, thin alley and he detours down it, deals the soldier assaulting her a blow with the flat of his sword. The man flails, jerks, and he offers her a hand but she spits at him, scrambles to her feet.

“I’ll see you to safety,” he says, but knows she doesn’t understand him. A pair of eyes peer out from a doorway behind her, and then a child starts to cry.

“What are you doing?” someone snarls behind him and Nicolò turns. His heart turns to lead.

“ _You_.”

“Me,” the infidel from Antioch says grimly, his voice a blade. He has his sword out, switches it from hand to hand. “You are looking a lot less dead.”

“So are you.” Nicolo stares at him. He’s not wearing a helmet and there is no scar on his neck. His dark eyebrows are drawn down over the eyes Nicolò cannot stop _dreaming_ about. He says something to the woman cowering behind Nicolò, who replies. Nicolò doesn’t know enough Arabic to catch it all.

“You haven’t answered my question.”

Nicolò lifts his gauntleted hands. “I have no quarrel with unarmed women and children.”

“Tell that to your fucking soldiers, Christian,” the infidel’s face is blazing, the kind of fury that comes from desperate helplessness. “Tell that to the men murdering and raping an innocent civilian population.”

“I’m trying,” Nicolò snaps. “I got a little distracted.”

The infidel looks down at the dazed soldier bleeding on the floor, then back up at Nicolò. “Right.”

“Yes, _right,_ ” Nicolò says. “And now I need to go and find one of the generals and get them to put a stop to this.”

“They won’t,” the infidel says. “Not for Muslim women and children. They don’t give a fuck.”

“They _will,_ ” Nicolò insists. “Pillage is against our religion. Murder is _against_ our _religion_.”

“Most men only obey religion as far as it meets their wishes,” the infidel counters. “And this is a…what do you call it? A baptism. In blood. Fitting, for the city that killed your prophet.”

“Saviour,” Nicolò corrects.

“Prophet,” the infidel insists. Nicolò cannot believe that they are fighting about this whilst around them a city burns. Then, the infidel looks over at the woman, at the unconscious soldier. Her children have rushed out of the house to her. The littlest one is in tears and the woman looks close to breaking down too. 

She says something to the infidel who responds. Nicolò should go. He has to find Raymond, to put a stop to this.

“I know a sanctuary,” the infidel says, unexpectedly. It’s in Latin, so it has to be directed at Nicolò.

“A sanctuary?”

“They won’t find it. People would be safe there.”

“I’ve got soldiers under my command, good men,” Nicolò says slowly, catching on. He sheathes his sword. “They could take people to safety.”

“Would they?”

“If I ordered it.”

“Would you?”

As if the question even needs asking! Nicolò levels him with a glare and the infidel nods, once. “The blue tower by the southeast gate. Bring them there.”

“Blue tower, southeast gate,” Nicolò confirms, and then takes a deep breath, turns. This is madness. This is going against everything they’ve fought for, but there’s a difference between killing a man-at-arms on the battlefield and killing a woman in front of her home. He refuses to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ would condone the slaughter of innocents, infidel or not. He refuses to believe his God would be _that_ vengeful.

He plunges back out into the city, sloshes through puddles of blood and rounds up his soldiers, conveys his new orders. Imilia and Corbus both give him looks but obey unquestioningly, organising the rest of their men, gathering hysterical civilians into groups and marching them off into the warren of streets. None of their fellows notice, too caught up in the carnage. After a moment, he sees Raymond’s standard, is about to cross the square to it when he spots Raymond himself, crowned helmet glinting in burning sunshine. His sword is blooded to the hilt and he has a girl by the hair and Nicolò suddenly feels vilely, horribly ill. The infidel was right. Nicolò had hoped he wouldn’t be. After another second’s horror, he turns on his feel and catches up with his soldiers, guarding the rear from anyone who might get ideas.

The blue tower is where the infidel said it would be, lapis against the glorious blue sky. The infidel waits in its shadow, a cloak pulled over his head and beard.

“Go and get more,” he tells Imilia.

“Sire,” she starts. “Did you not find Lord Raymond?”

“Lord Raymond is otherwise occupied,” he says, resting a gauntleted hand on her shoulder. She takes his meaning, scowls furiously.

“Fuck.”

“Indeed.” Then, “We can’t do much, Imilia, but we can do something. We have to do something.”

“I know,” she says. “How many are there space for?”

“I don’t know. As many as you can. Be careful.”

“Yes, sire. You too.”

He nods and watches her rally her troop. He turns to the infidel, watches him speak quickly and urgently to the group of civilians, point them in the direction of a passage cut close to the curtain wall. One of the women is nodding, adjusts her headscarf and the child balanced on her hip. When the infidel is done speaking, she leads the way and they disappear into the gloom.

“What did your general say?” the infidel asks. Nicolò half turns to him, doesn’t need to respond. The infidel laughs, but there’s no humour in it. “I told you so.”

Nicolò is about to respond – with what he has no idea – when he hears hooves, shouts in Latin.

“Go,” he says to the infidel. “ _Go._ ”

It’s too late. The soldiers round the corner – led by Edmund, of all people. Nicolò’s innards have turned to stone. He sends a prayer up that his soldiers have been delayed, that Edmund will not see what they have been doing. He cannot die, but Imilia and Corbus can. He cannot die, but the civilians they are trying to save will. Edmund has spotted him. His soldiers have halted. Many of them are drunk, blood soaked, and Nicolò wants to kill them for that; it burns in his blood, a flaming torch.

A hand closes on his shoulder. The infidel is behind him. In one motion, Nicolò feels the rasp of dagger across his throat, quick and sharp. It burns, the blood begins to flow and he is abruptly unsupported. He stumbles forward, feels his wrist break as he lands.

“Genova!” he hears, and Edmund is catching him. “Jesu, Genova, stay with me. _Stay with me._ You, after him!”

“No,” Nicolò manages, but Edmund just takes it for protest at his own death. He is choking on blood, tastes it salty in his mouth. His throat is already healing.

“Get a priest,” Edmund is snapping, but Nicolò is swallowing hard, bringing bloodied hands up to his throat. The skin has knitted itself back together. He pushes himself to his knees, breathes again and again. Edmund is staring at him, horrified and wondering all in one. “Jesus _God._ Genova…I…you were bleeding out.”

“I know,” Nicolò rasps. “Believe me, I know.”

“This is…are you an angel?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have to be,” Edmund shakes his head. “You’re too holy for this to be the devil’s work.”

Nicolò reaches for him, meets his eyes as steadily as he can. His hands are shaking. He hopes that the infidel got away, that the women and children they’d saved are safe. “You can’t tell anyone, Edmund. Promise me. _Promise_ me.”

“I promise.”

“Swear on the cross.”

“I swear on the cross,” Edmund says, dazed. Then, crossing himself, he begins to pray. After a moment, Nicolò joins him.

**iii. genova**

Genova in winter is a fever-dream. The distant mountains are snow-capped, and the cool rains are like a blessing. Nicolò leaves the soldiers who have come back to Genova with him at a tavern, instructs them to see their families and recover from the journey before meeting him for a Mass at the end of the week. He buys a horse and rides home, south along the cliffs, watching the waves smash themselves bloody onto the rocks. The tension in his chest, the feeling of wrongness increases with every passing mile, winding him tighter than a clockwork toy. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t have come back. He doesn’t know what he should have done instead but he knows that home shouldn’t feel so _wrong._

By mid-afternoon, he can see the villa on its craggy perch above Portofino. He rides into the courtyard to a flurry of activity – stable-hands leaping to attention, dogs barking, bows, whispers.

“Father Nicolò is home!” he hears Blasia, the cook’s daughter, squeal and finds a smile for her. She was just a little lass when he left, now she’s taller, all wheat-blonde plaits and freckles and two missing front teeth. She holds out her arms just like she used to when he left, when she was just walking and he obliges, scooping her up and swinging her around to her giddy delight. The other servants’ children have also abandoned their chores to come clustering around him, demanding questions about the Holy Land and the infidels.

“Leave Father Nicolò alone,” the head groom barks after a few minutes of this. “He’s had a long journey; he doesn’t need you pests bothering him.”

“Thank you,” Nicolò says to him, then smiles down at the children. He is glad to see them, to see their innocence, their joy at something as simple as his homecoming. It calms him. “I’ll tell you all stories later once you’ve done your chores. Deal?”

“Deal,” Blasia crows, and begins chivvying everyone off, just the way her mother does. Nicolò turns and heads into the house, through the hall where men jump to attention, stare at his sun-browned skin, his confident stride. It feels different to be back, to be a knight now, equal to his brother in rank. It feels like the place doesn’t fit, that it’s just a little too small where before it was a little too big.

His sister-in-law is waiting in the solar with her ladies and she rises to her feet, putting down her embroidery and crossing the room to him, hands outstretched. She had just given birth when he left and she’s pregnant again; how much he has missed!

“Guinelda,” Nicolò says, bowing over her hand.

“Nicolò! This is a lovely surprise.” Her voice is warm. “We hadn’t expected you for weeks!”

“We caught a fair wind,” Nicolò smiles, straightening, accepts her hug. “I see I’m just in time to baptise my latest niece or nephew. When are you due?”

“I’m going into confinement in two days,” she says, then drops to a whisper. “If I leave it any longer, I fear my ladies shall launch a conspiracy against me.”

“How dreadful,” he laughs, and Guinelda sparkles up at him for a second. She’s always had this way of drawing all the light in the room to her, of reflecting it back out at the world. When he was a younger, before the Church, before the holy war, he’d entertained fantasies of marrying her but now, well. Her father would never have let her marry a bastard son with no prospects, and his brother had got there first. It doesn’t ache as much as it used to but sometimes he wonders, wonders what that life would have been like.

“I’m so glad to have you home to defend me against them.”

“I shall do my best.”

“My knight in shining armour,” Guinelda says.

“Literally,” he adds, and they meet each other’s eyes and start to laugh, ignoring the disapproving looks of her ladies. She’s still holding his hands. This is just like how it was when they were children; acting out the old epics, whispering ghost stories at night, always on each other’s side.

“How was it?” she asks when they’ve calmed down. Then, “Sorry, where are my manners? You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. You’ve only just come home and here I am pestering you like one of the children!”

“No, I…” Nicolò says. It’s not that he doesn’t want to tell her, just that he doesn’t know what to. He can’t say anything about the undying thing, doesn’t want to bring up the massacre, or what battle felt like. She could take it with equanimity, he’s sure of that, but it feels like sacrilege to bring that much suffering into her peaceful house. Perhaps he could say something about the landscape, the travelling, the feeling of walking in the footsteps of Jesus, how immensely small and calm he felt in the immensity of such a sacred place. He’s about to open his mouth when someone knocks on the doorframe. He turns.

“What’s the matter, Grifo?” Guinelda asks the servant hovering there. Nicolò doesn’t recognise him.

“My lord is requesting Father Nicolò’s presence, my lady.” Then, to Nicolò, “he is in his rooms, sire.”

Nicolò sighs, and Guinelda squeezes his hands.

“It’ll be alright,” she says, hopeful. She’s always been hopeful, hopeful that he’ll stay, hopeful that his brother might wake up one day with a heart. “You’re a hero, now.”

“Thank you,” he says, and kisses her forehead. “I shall see you at dinner.”

The servant leads him up the spiralling stairs to the tower where his brother’s apartments are. He straightens his tunic, pulls a hand through his hair. It amazes him that even after all this time – after countless battles, run ins with the infidels, three miraculous escapes from death – the very thought of his brother makes him quake in his boots like the scared boy sent to the monks at San Fruttuoso. Even after all this time, a small childish part of him wishes for his brother to be proud. He sighs, lets himself into the room.

“Nicolò,” Teramo says. He doesn’t rise, and his grey eyes look up and down, lingering on the sword at Nicolò’s hip, the new spurs, the badge Toulouse had passed on. “A knight now, I see. On the battlefield?”

“Yes, sir,” Nicolò says. His brother’s eyelids flicker at the different form of address, but he doesn’t do anything. They are, after all, the same rank now. “I saved Raymond of Toulouse.”

“I suppose the French don’t understand that one doesn’t knight a bastard.” Nicolò doesn’t say anything, is just silent. Teramo shakes his head. “It would have been better if you’d been martyred.”

It’s not a surprise. Not really. Nicolò’s known what his brother has thought of him for years, but this is bold and blunt. This is the first time Teramo has said it to Nicolò’s face. He breathes in, measured, exhales through his nose. “I nearly was. The Lord God had mercy.”

“Or the Lord God doesn’t care,” Teramo says, turning back to his papers in a gesture of dismissal. He doesn’t care about Nicolò’s journeys, doesn’t care about the Holy Land, about everything Nicolò has seen and done in the name of their god, their family. He thought going on the crusades would change something in their relationship. He thought going on the crusades would make Teramo see him, value him, just a bit, just for once. He is so suddenly, blindingly angry that he could boil over.

He takes a deep breath, clings to the appearance of calm. “I’ll be staying until the baby is born.”

Teramo doesn’t bother with a response. Nicolò looks at his brother’s bowed head, clenches his fist and releases it, finger by finger. Then he turns on his heel and leaves.

*

The next morning he travels down the coast to see the monks at San Fruttuoso, sits at Mass with them and prays for clarity, for guidance. They treat him with a wary respect, so different from the calm companionship he’d found when he’d taken his vows all those years ago. He was going to seek out his mentor, to confide all that has happened, but when he is face to face with everything he has left behind he cannot get the words out. Father Zuane blesses him, and they pray together for an hour, speak less of the war than Nicolò would like. It rattles around in his bones, casts a shadow over every footstep, and he wants to talk it out in all its blood-soaked glory, all its guts-spilled horror, but no-one here seems that interested.

If they can’t talk about the war, there is no way he can talk about dying. About heaving back to life, over and over and over.

“Are you coming back?” Father Zuane asks over dinner. “You know you would be welcomed with open arms.”

“I know,” Nicolò says. “I don’t know. I might go back to the Holy Land.”

“I hear the French have set up kingdoms in the Saracen cities.”

“Yes. Antioch and Jerusalem.” Nicolò sighs. Unbidden, images of the massacre at Jerusalem flash before his eyes. “I just don’t think I can settle, Father.”

Father Zuane’s eyes are kind, his worn face still. “You don’t have to settle, my son. The Lord God needs warriors, needs justice, just as much as He desires prayer and stillness. Settle when you are ready to and not before.”

“Truly?”

“Of course.” Father Zuane makes the sign of the cross, and Nicolò bows his head to it, breathes through the sudden lump in his throat. He thanks Father Zuane for his time, and leads his horse back up the cliffs. He pauses at the top, leaves his horse to graze in amongst the trees and toes his way to the edge of the cliff, peering over the side at the billowing waves hurling themselves against the rock. Without thinking, he tilts himself further and further over the edge, feeling his centre of gravity shift an inch too far and then he’s falling.

Landing is quick and it is violent. He comes back to life with his broken neck half healed and a wave crashing over his face, splutters. There is blood on his tunic and when his body is whole again he crawls out of reach of the water, around the cliff to the tiny cove tucked in its lee. He collapses onto the pebbles and cries, chokes, but nothing feels any better, any lighter. He cannot die. He will never reach Heaven. He is doomed to spend his life wandering the Earth, living and living and living; what is the _damn_ point of it all? What is the point of a life if not to do God’s good work and meet Him on Judgement Day?

He cries a while longer and then calms, sits on the beach for hours before it occurs to him, watching the sunset sink over the sea. The infidel – the infuriating, awful man who still stalks his dreams even all these months later. He survived a death blow too. Nicolò saw where his dagger went, _knows_ that no-one should have survived it. Perhaps he’ll have answers. It’s not much, but it’s better than lingering here like a ghost. It’s better than going back to a war he thinks is more for power than it is for God.

He hauls himself up and finds the steep path from the cliff, climbs back to the world above.

*

“Promise me you’ll be safe,” Guinelda says. She is a vision on the front steps, and he holds her newly-baptised son in his arms, marvels at the tiny fingers, the perfectly-formed eyelashes. The shy three-year old niece he barely knows clings to her skirts. Teramo is, predictably, out on a tour of his lands; Nicolò is glad he doesn’t have to see his brother again.

“I’ll be safe,” he says, kissing the baby once more and handing him back to his nurse, opening his arms to Guinelda. She’s noticed his distraction, his brooding; he’d gritted his teeth and made up a lie about the war. She hadn’t believed him, but hadn’t pressed the issue. “I promise.”

“Thank you,” she says into his shoulder and then steps back. He kneels for her blessing like a husband would, doesn’t care that it isn’t his place. She rests her ringed hand on his head, murmurs the Latin softly. He feels the weight of it, of her care, settle around his shoulders, warmer than any cloak. When she’s done, he rises.

“I hope you find your peace,” she says.

He smiles, but is sure it’s more of a grimace. “I hope so too.”

**iv. mosul**

Following dreams is a harder task than it sounds. Nicolò cannot control whether he sees the infidel or the other three. They are somewhere dry and grassy, with flat, thorny trees, and incredible creatures like he’s never seen before. The infidel is in a nondescript city, flashes of white-washed stone houses and the minaret of a mosque. Nicolò sees a woman’s smiling face, several children screeching with laughter around his feet. There are few identifying features, but Nicolò writes it all down whenever he sees anything, wracks his brain for answers.

The infidel fought at Antioch, under Kerbogha. When he reaches Constantinople, Nicolò asks anyone he can find, is met with mostly blank stares, shrugs. After about three months, he stumbles across a well-dressed priest in the marketplace, deliberately runs into him as an excuse to get talking.

“Kerbogha?” the priest says, narrowing his eyes. “He’s from Mosul. A beloved warrior, I hear, though perhaps less so now after his showing at Antioch.”

“Where’s Mosul?” Nicolò asks, barely believing his luck after months of dead ends and disinterest.

“Over a thousand miles east of here,” the priest says. “A month’s walking. Though if you go to the staging post at the northern gate, you might find a caravan willing to take you.”

“Thank you, Father,” Nicolò says. “Blessings on you.”

“And on you,” the priest says, bemused, and Nicolò turns to go.

The journey is long, boring and arduous. Nicolò joins the caravan’s guard and amuses himself by practising his Arabic with his fellow-travellers. They are all curious as to why a Genoan is not sticking to the safety of the Crusader states; he makes up a set of answers about wanting to see the rest of the land, fidgets with the discomfort of how easy lying is growing. After about a week, the adults grow bored of questioning him, and the children don’t care about realism, just want to hear his stories of dolphins and troubadours and dragons. They hitch rides on his camel and tease him about his accent and he already feels himself lightening around them, lightening with his purpose. He’s going to find the infidel. He’s going to find answers. He has to.

They reach Mosul with little difficulty and he thanks the leader of the caravan, pays the rest of his dues. The city is beautiful – all towers and gleaming white houses, the streets thronging with people. Nicolò wanders for a while, lets his feet carry him where they will, and eventually he finds himself standing outside a building that, without question, is a church. He blinks at it, at the cross proudly displayed. He hadn’t realised that Christians lived this far east.

After a moment more of contemplation, he turns the door and steps into the dusky, incense-filled interior, anoints himself with the holy water in the portico and crosses himself. He finds a quiet spot to pray. Eventually, there are footsteps and he looks up to see a priest.

“Greetings, traveller,” the priest says, accurately pegging Nicolò’s dust-stained, borrowed robes, and sunburn. “Have you come from far?”

“Constantinople,” he says. “Genova, before that.”

The priest’s eyebrows raise, just a little. “A long journey. What brings you to Mosul?”

“Just visiting,” Nicolò says, rising to his feet. “Is there anywhere you can recommend for me to stay, Father?”

“One of the church families will have space in their guest quarters,” the priest tells him. “If you’re willing to work.”

“Of course,” Nicolò says. “I would be honoured.”

“Stay for the service,” the priest says. “I shall introduce you to some of the patriarchs afterwards.”

The service is different to those he is used to in Genova, even to Constantinople, but there are enough similarities for him to feel comfortable. After it is over, the priest is as good as his word, and introduces him to a family who immediately sweep him up into their fold. They have a marriageable daughter, several older sons, plenty of work; they would be _delighted_ to host the traveller. He falls into step with the daughter, Duha, on the way back from church, doesn’t miss the way her mother and aunts whisper and exchange meaning-laden glances.

“I won’t be staying long,” he tells her, wanting to get off on the right foot, to not raise her hopes.

“I don’t want to marry you anyway,” she returns, and they both laugh. “Please try and head off my parents.”

“I’ll do my best.”

His search for the infidel is slow-going to begin with – he’s so busy making himself useful, repaying the family their kindness – but when it happens it happens suddenly. He’s in the souk with several of their menfolk when he abruptly sees the infidel lounging on a chair with a pipe and a bowl of dates, laughing uproariously at something someone has said. Several small children hang off the back of his chair, and he has one on his lap, an embroidered hat on his head. He turns a little and Nicolò sees the cut of his profile. It’s him. Nicolò is utterly certain. He would know the man blindfolded, from his step. He would _know._

But a tiny voice takes up residence in the back of his head. What if it isn’t? What if Nicolò is wrong? The ground shifts, unsteady, beneath his feet and he takes a deep breath, the realisation appears as if it has always been there. There is one sure way to find out.

It takes a several weeks and a lot of reconnaissance to find the best spot to launch his ambush, but less than a month later he’s following the infidel back from evening prayers, knife tightly in his fingers, cloak up and head down. The infidel always takes a shortcut home through an alley, and it’s there that Nicolò attacks, whirlwind fast and vicious. The infidel turns, tries to lunge for the knife. Nicolò’s hood slips and he stabs the infidel hard, right in the throat and tugs his cloak back over his head, snatches the infidel’s purse so as to look like a robbery. His heart is beating very fast. He’s sure the infidel didn’t get a good look at his face, cannot know that it was him. He climbs onto the flat roof of the building adjoining the alley, presses himself flat and peers over the side. The infidel is flat on the ground, bloodied, unmoving, and for one awful instant Nicolò is sure he’s got the wrong man.

Then the infidel splutters back to life. The relief is heady, overwhelming and Nicolò holds his breath, silently praises God and his infinite mercy. The infidel swears loudly several times, then peels himself to his feet, looks around.

“Well fuck,” he says to himself. “Why are you fucking hallucinating, Al-Kaysani?” Then, finding his cut purse, “Just a robber. Ai, this fucking city.”

After a moment’s irritated contemplation, he continues his journey. Nicolò waits for him to be out of sight and then rolls onto his back, looks up into the cold, starry face of the heavens and wonders what on earth he does next.

*

In the end, he doesn’t get a choice. The atabeg of Mosul gets married, and his hosts drag him out to the celebrations in the main city square. It is a lovely evening, all torchlight and bright hangings and good food. He is convinced into a dance by Duha and then some of her friends, before escaping to stand on the side-lines and watch the festivities.

“Come on, Nicolò,” Duha suddenly reels out of the crowd, arm linked with a friend, both of them in fits of tipsy giggles. “You _have_ to try the lauzinaq. They’ve just put out a plate.”

“Alright,” Nicolò says equitably, follows them through the crowd towards the open-air feasting tables. “Excuse me,” he says to a pair of fellow revellers. One turns to let him pass and then freezes, his dark eyes narrowing. Nicolò’s stomach sinks through the floor.

“You,” the infidel says, but it’s more of a growl. “What are you doing here?” Then, with dawning understanding, “you _stabbed_ me, didn’t you? I wasn’t hallucinating at all!”

“I had to be sure,” Nicolò says because it’s the truth and it’s the only thing he _can_ say.

“You had to…fuck,” the infidel says and takes Nicolò’s sleeve, begins to tow him out of the crowd. Nicolò thinks he should fight him off, thinks he should try and escape, but he doesn’t want to cause a scene, to ruin other people’s nights. And anyway, he knew this day was coming sooner rather than later. Perhaps it’s better to do it now when everyone is distracted by the celebrations.

They end up in a deserted, tree-lined square a few streets away. The music drifts lazily over the rooftops, punctuated by volleys of delighted laughter. The infidel turns to face him. His festival finery fits him too well and he blazes in the moonlight, like someone has lit him up with divine fire.

“Why are you here?” he demands again.

It is almost a relief to be honest, after all these months of half-truths and deceit. “I need answers.”

“And you thought I could give them to you?”

“I killed you.”

“You fucking did. Twice, you asshole.”

“Yes, well. Now we’re even.” There is no humour in the infidel’s face, so Nicolò barrels on. “I killed you twice and you’re still alive. Why?”

“I’m flattered you think I know, crusader.”

“You don’t?”

“I haven’t got a fucking clue,” the infidel says, with far too much relish. Nicolò’s heartbeat is pounding in his ears. He thought the infidel would have answers. He thought he’d find closure, peace, but there’s none of that in the infidel’s mocking expression.

“Seriously?”

“Do you think I’d tell you even I did? That’s sweet. You’re my enemy.”

“Jerusalem-”

“Jerusalem was a surprise, granted. But you still invaded innocent lands. Your army still sacked Antioch, Jerusalem, brought misery to countless others.”

“Do you think I had a choice?”

“Everyone has a choice.”

“They drew lots at my monastery.”

“And I bet you were _devastated_ to be picked,” the infidel sneers. Nicolò doesn’t have an answer. He had wanted to go, to prove himself. He hadn’t been upset. He isn’t about to lie to win a point, and anyway he’s sure the infidel would see right through it.

“And I’m sure your people have _never_ invaded an innocent neighbour,” Nicolò hits back. “Antioch isn’t even remotely close to here.”

“It was jihad. We were defending our brothers.”

“And you _failed,_ ” Nicolò says in a sudden surge of viciousness. “You _failed._ ”

“God, you think I don’t know that?”

“We won the Holy Land for the people of God, and you _lost_ it.”

“No, you forced it from God’s people. You slaughtered how many thousands of God’s _innocent_ people?”

“They weren’t God’s people, you faithless heathen,” Nicolò snarls. “They weren’t.”

In one instant, the infidel has pulled a knife from his clothing. Nicolò does the same and they begin to circle each other. There’s something feral sparking inside Nicolò that he’s never felt before, something wild; he wants to fight, to draw blood, to do something that will ease the roaring, gaping, hungry emptiness inside him.

“Come on, then,” the infidel sneers, and then they’re fighting, punching, swiping, grappling. The knives get knocked out of their hands quickly and then they’re just tussling like a pair of drunken sots, blow for blow, still evenly matched without their weapons. The infidel is taunting him, insults that Nicolò understands, insults that he does not, insults that are a mix of different languages and make no sense at all.

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” he asks, backing away, wiping the back of his hand across his bloody chin.

“Don’t talk about my mother,” the infidel snarls, and then he’s scooping up the knife and going for Nicolò again. Nicolò sidesteps and swings around, picks up his knife and thrusts up, and then the infidel’s blood is spurting bright and hot between his fingers. Nicolò laughs, feels the infidel’s knife slide cleanly between Nicolò’s ribs in a sharp line of white-hot agony. The last thing he sees is dark eyes narrowed in pain and fury, and then he doesn’t see anything at all.

*

He wakes alone, the knife laid by his side, and laughs hysterically at the sky.

**v. aleppo**

Soon afterwards, he leaves Mosul and begins to wander. He hires himself out as a mercenary, joins whichever army will take him, gets deadlier and deadlier with each passing year. Every so often he sees the infidel – it’s rare to begin with, and then gets more and more common as time passes. Nicolò begins to look for him, to seek him out. Sometimes they are on the same side of a fight, and magnanimously ignore each other. More often they are on opposing sides and they seek each other out then, kill each other over and over and over again. His presence unbalances Nicolò like nothing else, his mocking and taunting like shifting sand beneath Nicolò’s feet. He fights with sure, deadly grace – is still the only person who gives Nicolò any sort of challenge. None of it makes Nicolò feel any better, but at least it’s a purpose of sorts.

“You’re like a bad coin, always showing up where you’re not wanted,” Nicolò growls somewhere outside of Damascus. Their swords are locked, sweat rolls down his forehead.

“You’re as persistent as the pox and a damn sight more uncomfortable,” the infidel snarls back. Their swords slip with a screech. Nicolò wonders which one of them is going to die today.

“Speaking from experience?”

“Shut _up._ ”

In Damascus, sometime after, Nicolò steps in to stop an imam getting robbed, insists on escorting him home. In return, the imam insists on inviting him in for tea.

“I was a crusader,” Nicolò tries to tell him.

“You would be welcome even if you were still one,” the imam says, quietly stubborn, a hand at his elbow. “Come on.”

They unexpectedly stumble into a friendship – the imam reminds him strongly of Father Zuane – and at his urging, Nicolò spends the better part of a year studying the Quran with some of his other students. It is enlightening, in the embarrassing, awkward way of having your entire worldview eroded away. Nicolò comes out of study sessions reeling, trying to remember which way is up. It’s so against everything he has been taught about Islam, so different to everything he’s clung to for years and years as his world has thrown him backwards and forwards like a ship caught in a storm. Some ships, he realises with no small amount of remorse, were built to sink.

Slowly, he finds his feet again, inch by excruciating inch. He talks to people about their faith, about their lives, then meditates on it, over and over. He goes back to the Bible and reads it again with a keener, more discerning eye. He says goodbye to the imam and moves north to Aleppo, finds peaceful work there labouring over a new mosque. One day, he is walking back to the guesthouse when he hears a commotion, follows it find a pair of veiled girls being harassed by a gang of young men. As he watches, one reaches out and snatches at one of the girl’s dresses, rips it away. Before he knows it, he’s getting in between them.

“Stop,” he says. “What are you _doing_?”

“It’s none of your business,” the gang leader says.

“You shouldn’t treat women like that.”

“I can treat them as I wish,” he says. “They’re heathens. Move.”

“No,” Nicolò says curtly, lifting his chin and planting his feet. The girls have, sensibly, fled.

“You’re not going to like what happens if you don’t.”

“Try me,” Nicolò says, raising his fists. The gang leader makes a sudden gesture and then they’re all onto him. He fights as best he can, feels one of them stab him and keeps fighting, but there are nine of them and one of him, and immortality aside nine against one is bad odds.

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” he hears a very familiar voice say, and then someone is bodily pulling one of Nicolò’s assailants off him, flinging him headfirst into a wall and shoving another so hard he trips over and hits his head on a stone. Blood is dripping into Nicolò’s eyes.

“Scram,” the infidel says, wolfish, grinning with all of his teeth. The gang look at him and at their unconscious leader, and wisely back off. Nicolò bends over, rests his hands on his knees and waits for his stab wounds to heal.

“Why?” he says to the floor after a second, then looks up.

“Don’t be an idiot, crusader,” the infidel is still smiling, but it’s wilder and more feral than any smile has a right to be. It sends something burning acrid through Nicolò’s blood. “I’m the only one who’s allowed to kill you.”

“I have a name,” Nicolò snaps, nettled.

“Oh really? I didn’t know that Christians bothered naming their children before they sacrificed them.”

“We don’t…” Nicolò starts but sees the shift of the man’s smile, the sudden teasing. “Nicolò. My name is Nicolò.”

“Nicolò,” he says and it sounds different in his voice, with his accent, all warm and lilting. It’s not unpleasant. A small, quiet part of Nicolò’s brain decides it could get used to hearing his name said like that. “Well, a fair exchange. I’m Yusuf.”

“Yusuf,” Nicolò says. It fits him easily, comfortably. Nicolò straightens, stretches, breathes. “Odd to have a name after all these years.”

“I’d rather got used to calling you crusader in my head. It has a ring to it,” Yusuf says. Then, with a flash of humour, “don’t tell me, don’t tell me. I was infidel, wasn’t I?”

Nicolò snorts. “Yes. However did you guess?”

“You weren’t particularly original.”

“I thought originality was wasted on you.”

“Ouch.” Yusuf sheathes his sword and starts to walk. Without even thinking, Nicolò falls into step beside him. They’re back on the main street when Yusuf asks: “what were you doing?”

“They were harassing a pair of Muslim girls. I was trying to help.”

“Why?”

“O believers! Stand firm for Allah and bear true testimony. Do not let the hatred of a people lead you to injustice,” Nicolò says quietly and Yusuf stops in the middle of the street, mouth falling open.

“Did you just quote the Quran at me?”

“Yes.”

“You-”

“I may have been wrong about a lot of things,” Nicolò says, turning to look him squarely in the face.

“You’re…” Yusuf splutters, and a smile tugs at Nicolò’s mouth.

“I’m still Christian. I still follow my own holy book and teachings. I’m just trying to understand yours a little more, too. I think it’s more similar than I realised.”

“Right,” Yusuf says, faintly. “I wasn’t expecting this.”

Nicolò shrugs. “People change. Even blinkered, stubborn crusaders.”

“Even blinkered, stubborn crusaders,” Yusuf echoes, and then matches Nicolò’s smile with a dawning one of his own. Unexpectedly, he continues: “Where you are headed next?”

“I hadn’t decided.”

Yusuf shifts for a second, and then lifts his chin as though he’s made a decision. “I was thinking of Alexandria. I want to see the ruins of the lighthouse. Want to come with me?”

Nicolò recognises an olive branch when he sees one, breathes through a feeling he cannot name that has taken up sudden residence in his chest. “Yes,” he says. “Yes I would.”

**vi. constantinople**

Travelling together is awkward and uneasy to begin with. They don’t quite trust each other for the first few months, and after that it builds so quietly that Nicolò doesn’t realise it for a good few months more.

“It’s been a year,” Yusuf says abruptly over the fire one evening. They are between jobs, camping near Tripoli and enjoying the last of the summer. The cicadas sing in the grass and the early-evening starlight washes in waves over the shallow hills, gilding everything with silver.

“How about that,” Nicolò responds, pretending to look into the flames but really studying Yusuf through them; the play of fire-shadows across his face, the infinitesimal way his eyebrows move when he’s thinking about something.

“Cheers,” Yusuf says, raising his clay cup. “A toast to our continued truce.”

Nicolò laughs and knocks his cup against Yusuf’s. “Indeed.”

It has turned out that Yusuf is an artist and a poet, that his voice is beautiful when raised in song. His drawings are scarily lifelike, and several times he draws Nicolò, holds it up to show him. The drawings progress from frowning stick figures with a raised sword, to frowning realism, to softer moments – Nicolò across a fire, Nicolò petting a horse – and then, abruptly, Yusuf stops showing him altogether. Nicolò tries not to take it personally. Yusuf is like this sometimes – mercurial, sudden as an evening storm. He doesn’t care to hide his emotions or his beliefs, is present and confident in the world and his place in it in a way Nicolò finds by turns vexing and humiliatingly fascinating.

“Isn’t it an odd thing to leave our old selves behind?” Yusuf says, perhaps six months later. They are in the Anatolian mountains, watching the growing turmoil in the Byzantine Empire and trying to get a handle on where they should intervene. “I should be an old man by now, looked after by my family, boring my grandchildren with the same old war stories.”

“Did you leave anyone behind?” Nicolò asks. He rolls over onto his back; the grass scratches through his tunic, but the crackle of the fire warms him. He doesn’t want to look at Yusuf, pretends it’s just idle curiosity. It’s not that he wants to know whether Yusuf had a wife and children, that he wants to know where Yusuf’s heart lies.

“My parents, my siblings. My wife died in childbed before I rode off to war.” Yusuf is silent for a second. “Her name was Rawiya. The baby didn’t survive either. It was a truly horrible few years, I’ll be honest about that.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Nicolò says, finds that he means it, that he aches to think of Yusuf hurting.

“Thank you,” Yusuf replies. Then, “how about you? Family? A wife?”

“Just my brother. Priests don’t marry.”

“Oh,” Yusuf says, and then laughs. “No pretty girl caught your eye?”

“Priests aren’t supposed to take mistresses either.”

“I bet that rule was popular.”

“You have no idea,” Nicolò rolls his eyes, smiles at the memory. “The number of confessions I heard from novices.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“What do you think the answer is going to be? No, of course I didn’t take a mistress.”

“Who needs a girl when you’ve got God, eh?” Yusuf asks, and Nicolò kicks him half-heartedly. Yusuf laughs, briefly, then says: “I’m just surprised, really, since you’re so…”

“I’m so what?”

“Handsome. Kind, when you’re of a mind to be. And with how much you love children, I thought it would have been something you wanted.”

Nicolò’s cheeks flame, and he shifts onto his side so he can look at Yusuf, who lying on his stomach and drawing shapes in the dust with a stick, his cloak tucked carelessly around him. For all his boldness, he is a remarkable listener – asking all the right questions, knowing when to be quiet – and, Nicolò thinks, he might be the first person ever to be interested in Nicolò for himself, for himself and nothing else. He sighs. “Before it all, I wanted to marry my friend. Guinelda. You’d have liked her, she was a storyteller, a singer. We were inseperable as children.”

“What happened to her?”

“She married my brother.” Nicolò says. “I’m a bastard son, and she’s noble-born, so our parents forbade it.”

“Love didn’t sway them?”

“No.” Nicolò pauses. Then, for no good reason at all, he blurts, “I convinced myself I was in love with her, but I’m not sure now whether I was. Not since taking vows, since going to war, since...” he waves his hand, knows Yusuf understands what he means. Yusuf’s rolled over now, is watching him steadily. “I think it was in all the songs and all the stories, and because we liked being around each other we built it into something it wasn’t.”

“We all know so little about love until it happens, don’t we,” Yusuf says. “Have you gone back?”

“Once.”

“Why did you leave?”

“You’re nosy tonight,” Nicolò says, and then, after a long silence, “my brother wanted me to be the one thing I cannot.”

“What’s that?”

“A martyr.”

“Well,” Yusuf says thoughtfully after a second. “I prefer you alive.”

“What a compliment.”

“I’m serious. I’m enjoying getting to know you without your crusade and all that mortal-enemies camelshit getting in the way.”

Yusuf’s eyes are lingering, drifting, as though he’s memorising the way Nicolò looks in the dark. Nicolò can feel them on his face, feels something begin to flame between his fingers, between his ribs. He clenches his fists, tries to snuff it out. He shouldn’t be feeling like this. This is a sin; this is against his holy vows and anyway even if it weren’t he shouldn’t be wanting to kiss his travel companion. This is not how their arrangement works.

“I’m going to get more wood,” he says, and pulls himself to his feet. He tells himself he cannot feel Yusuf watching him go.

*

They wind up in Constantinople just as news of the massacre begins to drift out of the Latin Quarter. If Nicolò strains his ears, he can hear the sound of the mob, the screaming. Smoke curls oily against the roof of his mouth.

“Well this takes me back,” Yusuf says grimly. “Getting people out?”

“Getting people out,” Nicolò agrees. “If we get separated, meet in the clearing we found this morning by nightfall tomorrow.”

“Right,” Yusuf says. Nicolò says a small prayer, waits for Yusuf to finish his own, and they break into a run.

It is a long night. There are only two of them against a many-headed, many-tentacled mob. It is like fighting the hydra from the epic poems, and Nicolò might be immortal and experienced but he is no Hercules. They get separated early on, Nicolò recognised as a Latin and pulled away into the jaws of the crowd, kicked, punched, beaten. Bones break and heal, and he fakes death so they leave him alone, lies in the street until they’ve moved on then peels himself up and begins to hunt for survivors, pulling them out of burning houses and taking them towards the harbour. Many of the rich Westerners have already fled for safer shores; it’s the poorer ones who remain, weeping and stumbling in Nicolò’s wake.

“Come on,” he says, harsher than he’d like to what is left of a Genoese family of cloth-merchants. “Do you want to be here when they get back?”

He ferries families to safehouses and to any boats that will take them to safety outside of the city, back and forth, back and forth, lungs burning and eyes streaming from the smoke. He is killed twice more but gets up and keeps going, the ends of his cloak dripping with blood and ash. He doesn’t see Yusuf, feels his heart knot itself into panic at the thought of losing him. He’s not going to lose Yusuf. Yusuf is immortal too and the mob isn’t hunting Muslims, not this time.

Dawn breaks like a hail of arrows over the city walls and Nicolò is holding a woman as she dies, burned beyond recognition. He’s barricading the door to a house shut whilst the mob brays outside, hoping they’ll think it’s deserted. He’s taking blows for people who can’t, getting in between innocents and the worst of the violence, but around him people are dead and dying, faces contorted and bodies ripped to shreds.

It is an endless, brutal day. By the time nightfall comes around again, he still hasn’t found Yusuf and is stumbling out of the city, bribing the guards to turn a blind eye. The mob has died down for now and the city sleeps, sated with blood and terror. His feet ache and his heart is corroding into millions of tiny, acidic pieces. When he gets to the clearing and sees Yusuf striding towards him, so solid, so reassuringly _here,_ he has to restrain the tidal urge to fall against his chest and weep.

“That was awful,” he says after a moment, voice raw.

Yusuf reaches out, grasps Nicolò’s elbow. “I know. Drink something. You’re shaking.”

Nicolò does as he’s bid, spits out bloodied water. He thinks he could rattle into pieces on the floor. He thinks that maybe he should. He didn’t do _enough._ “Why do people do this?” he hears himself say. “Why do they always _fucking_ do this? _Why?”_

“I don’t know, Nico. I can’t give you an answer. I wish I could.”

“I hate them,” Nicolò says. “I hate them all so much. Why can’t they just live and let live, why can’t people just _be_?”

Yusuf doesn’t try to say it’s alright, doesn’t offer useless platitudes. He draws Nicolò into his arms – Nicolò tries to push him away for a second but Yusuf won’t let him. He gives in after a moment, allows himself to be held, buries his face into the should of Yusuf’s tunic. Yusuf smells like smoke too, and his arms are impossibly warm, impossibly strong. Nicolò doesn’t think he’s been held like this since he was a little boy.

“Breathe,” Yusuf is saying. “Breathe, Nico, breathe.”

It’s a chant, a poem, and Nicolò times his breaths with it, in and out and in and out. When he pulls away – just a little – Yusuf is looking down at him, his face shadowed in the dark. Something howls, far away, and then before Nicolò even knows what’s happening they’re kissing, just the two of them. Yusuf’s mouth is soft and warm, his fingers tip-toe up Nicolò’s spine. The fire in Nicolò’s chest roars, hot and hungry and he kisses back, everything about sin and wrecked bodies and screaming violence evaporating from his head like smoke. They could be a candle, the two of them, holding back the night.

Yusuf’s hand slides under Nicolò’s tunic, across the skin of his stomach. “May I?” he asks against Nicolò’s mouth. “Is this…”

“Yes,” Nicolò says before he can think better of it. “Yes.”

A small, terrified part of his brain is screaming furiously at him to step away, to stop this madness, to stop this _sin_ but he can’t. He just can’t. Yusuf is like a lodestone, drawing him forward. They undress, slowly, carefully and look at each other in the moonlight; Yusuf looks like a statue, like a hero who has stepped right out of an epic poem, beautiful in the dark. Nicolò can barely breathe from how much he _wants._ He steps forward, back into Yusuf’s arms, winding his fingers through Yusuf’s hair. Yusuf’s beard scratches his face, and they press in, skin against skin. Nicolò has never been touched like this before, with such care, such reverence, as though he is something holy, something worthy of worship.

Afterwards, Yusuf makes a bed of their cloaks and tugs Nicolò down to lie beside him, wraps an arm over his waist and falls quickly asleep. Nicolò tries to follow but he can’t; the weight of what he’s just done crashes hard over his head. Yusuf’s embrace suddenly feels smothering. The small, drowned-out voice rises to a fever pitch. This was a sin, a temptation, a stupid, stupid mistake. What in God’s name was he thinking? He was emotional, overwrought. He can’t stay.

The moon sinks towards another day and Nicolò carefully disentangles himself, packs a few things into his pack and hazards one last look at Yusuf, face soft in sleep. His heart is beating too fast, a frenzied attack against his breastbone. This is for the best, he tells himself fiercely. This is what he has to do. They were fine on their own for years before their truce, will be fine on their own now. He’s let this go on too long as it is.

He takes a deep breath, throws up the hood of his cloak, and melts away into the forest.

**vii. athens**

He wanders again, east and west, north and south, no compass, no guide, no peace. Some days he doesn’t know why he’s so upset. Yusuf is a good man, touching him like that felt so right, they were close companions already and Nicolò is making a fuss over nothing. Other days he wants to claw his own skin off. It’s bad enough that he’s immortal, but now he’s committing sodomy with a man who used to be his enemy. It has to be the devil’s work. There’s no other explanation.

But he wants. He wants and he wants and he wants – to find Yusuf and fall at his feet and kiss him, over and over and over. He wants years, centuries. Immortality wouldn’t be so bad if he had Yusuf at his side; he could miss out on heaven if he got to wake to Yusuf’s smile each morning.

That’s blasphemy, the voice snarls in his head. The thoughts of Yusuf cower away, back into the box Nicolò has forced them into.

He winds up at a monastery on an island and goes into seclusion there, spends his days fasting and praying for guidance. He dreams of the others still, trekking through snowy mountains. He dreams of Yusuf – in a market, in a city, travelling by caravan – and he aches to hold him. But he can’t. That’s not what this eternal life is for. That’s not what he was put on the earth to do. He digs his fingernails into his palms and tries to force himself to forget.

Four months later, he dreams of Yusuf again. He is in a square, with a ruined temple overlooking a city, and he is surrounded by men beating him, over and over. He is screaming. He is in chains, in a cold, dark cellar. The door closes on the last of the light. Nicolò wakes to something snapping inside him, tumbles out of bed and shoves his feet into his sandals.

“I have to go,” he tells the monk on duty at the gate.

“I’ll get Brother Yiannis to bring the boat around,” the monk says, evidently confused by Nicolò’s state of undress, his blazing eyes. “Peace be upon you, brother.”

Nicolò finds the ruined temple in the third city he reaches, takes rooms at a tavern and begins to search the markets, talks to as many people as he can. It’s like the first time he was looking for Yusuf, years ago in Constantinople, following dreams and running into walls, but now everything is different. He is not lost, not anymore.

“They’ve been trying to sell this Turk for at least a month,” he hears someone say in a tavern. “But everyone says he’s cursed or he’s a demigod or something. His wounds just heal, just like that.”

“Demigods don’t exist,” their companion snorts.

When the companion leaves to go and buy more drinks, Nicolò slides up behind the man, gets the address of the slaver. The house is not hard to find, and he bounces on the balls of his feet as he knocks at the door, money pickpocketed and saved and eked out jangling in his purse. The door opens and a tall, thin man leans out.

“I’m here about the Turk,” Nicolò says. “I want to buy him.”

“Sorry,” the man says. “Master’s already sold him. He leaves this afternoon.”

“Well that is unfortunate for you,” Nicolò says, and backhands him hard across the face, kicks him against a wall where he falls, slumped and shapeless. He makes short work of the others drawn by the commotion, sticks his knife into the eye of the slaver and pulls him close by his golden jewellery.

“Where is he?” he hisses.

The man gurgles. “Cellar.”

“Thank you,” Nicolò says, and yanks out the knife, wipes it on the shoulder of his cloak and throws him to the floor where he huddles, moaning. He stoops to unlatch the ring of keys clasped to the man’s belt. “You are very kind.”

In the cellar, Yusuf is half-conscious and bloodstained and thinner than he was before. His chains are attached to the wall, and his hair is longer, lank. Nicolò’s rage boils hotter and he takes the keys he’s liberated, tries them until he finds the right one for the lock on Yusuf’s chains. Yusuf is roused, briefly, peers up at him, then murmurs: “Am I dreaming?”

“No,” Nicolò says, choked. “You’re not. Come on.”

He takes Yusuf back to the guesthouse, asks the serving girl for food and hot water, and helps Yusuf up the stairs to his rented room, lowers him gently onto the bed. He smooths Yusuf’s hair out of his eyes, pulls his bloodied tunic away from his shoulders to check for damage – he knows he won’t find any but he has to see, he has to be sure.

“You’re here,” Yusuf says after a while, the words as carefully-placed as a prayer. “You’re _here._ ”

“I’m here. I’m sorry. I’m so, _so_ sorry.”

“Nicolò…”

Nicolò cannot stop now, not that he’s started. “I’m sorry for running. I shouldn’t have. It was the most stupid thing I’ve ever done but I just panicked and I…”

“It’s alright,” Yusuf says emphatically.

“It’s _not,_ ” Nicolò tells him with an equal amount of fervour.

“Sometimes you have to take space to think things through.”

“But I left you.”

“You did. Not your best timing, I’ll admit, but you’re here now.”

There’s a knock on the door and Nicolò goes to retrieve the urn of warm water, the washcloths, the platter of dates, figs, bread, and cheese, thanks the serving girl and shuts the door firmly in her face. He puts the food down on the footstool, brings the water to the bed. Yusuf reaches for it, but Nicolò pushes his hand away. His heart is thrumming at the base of his throat.

“May I?” he asks.

“Alright,” Yusuf sighs, and pulls his tunic over his head. Nicolò takes it and throws it into the corner of the room.

“I’ll take it to be burned,” he says, and begins to dab at the blood encrusted all over Yusuf’s shoulders and back. The skin underneath is whole and unmarked, but Nicolò recognises the way the blood falls, the lines of a whip. “What did they _do_ to you?”

“Nothing I haven’t had before,” Yusuf sighs, leans his head against Nicolò’s shoulder as he works. It feels shockingly intimate to be this close to him, to be cleaning him, inch by inch, scraping the blood off, trailing his fingers across Yusuf’s shoulders and back and chest. It feels like four months of seperation haven’t just passed. It feels like they have been lovers for years.

“Can you forgive me?” he asks when the worst of the blood is gone.

“I already have,” Yusuf says, sitting up straight. His eyes are fixed on Nicolò’s, softer than Nicolò has ever seen them. “Can you forgive yourself?”

Nicolò sighs. “Maybe.”

“Nico,” Yusuf says and there’s that nickname again, the one Nicolò loves the sound of on Yusuf’s tongue. He reaches for Nicolò, pulls Nicolò down into his lap. Nicolò allows this, allows Yusuf to cup his face with his free hand. “Guilt is the most pointless emotion. You know that?”

“I’ll try.”

“Can I convince you?” Yusuf asks. They are teasing words, but there’s nothing teasing about the way he says them. He brushes a light kiss over Nicolò’s cheek bone, one and then the other and then his forehead. Nicolò closes his eyes and Yusuf presses kisses to his eyelids too, like breaths, like butterfly wings in the summer.

Nicolò takes Yusuf’s face in his hands and kisses him properly, breathes through the conflicting emotions that try to raise their ugly heads. After a second, they subside into grumbling quiet, and after two he forgets that they’re there altogether, is lost in the kiss, in the feel of Yusuf’s arms around him, of Yusuf’s hand curling over his thigh.

Yusuf breaks the kiss by millimetres, puts his hand between Nicolò’s shoulder-blades. “Still with me?”

“Yes,” Nicolò says hoarsely, unbelieving. He feels like a city in ruins. He feels like the first buds of spring, opening on the trees. “Yes, I’m still here.”

**Author's Note:**

> If I've got anything historical or religious wrong, please feel free to throw me a comment and I'll sort it out. 
> 
> (also thank you so much to alltimegay for commenting on an earlier version of this work when it still had chapters. I'm sorry I had to delete your comment to make this a oneshot!)


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